A Different Kind of Summer

Chris pulled his arm away. “I hate ointment.”

She turned to his fellow scientist. “Your mom told me you’re twelve.”

Molly dropped her cardboard roll, discarding all appearance of childhood as she rose from the ground. “Nearly thirteen.”

“Twelve,” Iris said firmly.

“Not for long.”

“You’re twelve, and you’ll be twelve for another four months.”

Gwyn sidestepped the brewing squabble. “Are you interested in having a summer job? I need a babysitter who’s willing to play with Chris, someone who’ll remember bug spray and sunscreen. It would be about twenty hours a week, for July and August. Usually five hours at a time, sometimes more like nine. And if that worked for all of us, in the fall we could talk about evenings.”

“I’d love to do it! I can start right now.”

“You can start after exams,” Iris said.

“Next week, then. How much would I make, Mrs. Sinclair?”

“Molly! She’ll do it as a favor, Gwyn. What are neighbors for?”

“I’m paying five dollars an hour now.”

“No way, no way.” Iris reached into her pocket for her cigarettes again. “She doesn’t need five dollars an hour. If you insist on paying her, pay her something reasonable. Two dollars. That’s plenty.”

“Five times twenty,” Molly said softly. She got a faraway look while she did the math. “That’s… that’s eighty dollars a week! Oh, I’m so going shopping.” She gave a little jump. “I can get a new dress for the year-end dance!”

“You see why I want her to study? It’s one hundred dollars, Molly. Five times two and move the decimal, for heaven’s sake.” Iris tapped Gwyn’s arm. “Four dollars, and that’s final.”

Gwyn tried not to listen to Molly and Iris negotiating how much Molly should be paid and whether she should get a bank account and how much she should put away for her education. She hoped this was a good idea. As hard as it was going to be to call Mrs. Henderson with the news, it would be even harder to make the same kind of call to Molly.

AFTER WASHING DIRT from Chris’s bites and applying a first dose of antibiotic ointment Gwyn took store-bought salad and a ready-cooked chicken from the fridge and arranged them on the table, moving aside all the cardboard ice core samples he’d brought with him.

“Is Molly instead of Mrs. Henderson?” he asked as he pulled out his chair and climbed onto it. “Or would Mrs. Henderson still come sometimes?”

“Instead of.”

“Good.”

“Good?”

“I don’t like Mrs. Henderson.”

“You never told me that before. Why don’t you like her?”

He shrugged, lifting far more lettuce onto his plate than he would ever eat. Gwyn watched, thinking about nanny cams and horror stories she’d read in the paper. She repeated, “Why don’t you like Mrs. Henderson?”

“She’s grumpy.”

Gwyn couldn’t deny that. “Grumpy, how?”

He started putting some of the lettuce back in the salad bowl.

“You can’t do that, Chris. Go ahead for now, but in general you can’t. Once you touch food you have to keep it. Grumpy like yelling? Spanking?”

“Like I better stay out of the way. Can I have a drumstick?”

She turned the plate so the drumstick was in easy reach. Grumpy like he’d better stay out of the way? A child in his own home feeling in the way. She should have realized. She had realized. She should have acted sooner.

“Chris, I wish we didn’t need a babysitter, but we do for now. So after this will you promise to tell me if there’s ever a problem? If the sitter’s grumpy—let’s say grumpier than I am—or keeps the TV on all the time or makes you feel like you’d better stay out of her way. Will you tell me?”

“Okay. Mom, don’t you think there’d be worms in those mammoth steaks?”

“Chris!” Her sharp tone startled both of them. “Not while we’re eating. I mean it.” He’d been talking about the mammoth all week, now with the added detail about the buttercups and the ten-thousand-year-old steak dinner. She was tired of hearing about the mammoth and she was especially tired of hearing about its meat.

He stared silently at his plate and used a pointy carrot stick to poke at a tomato wedge. “Ms. Gibson says I don’t need to know about climate change yet.”

“I agree.” Scientists could argue about whether or not the climate was changing all they liked, but little children shouldn’t have to think about it.

“That’s what she calls it. Climate change. Plenty of time for that in high school, she says.”

Chris heard that a lot, whenever he wanted to know things like why humans couldn’t get to Mars or whether bacteria felt it when you took antibiotics. It was one of the drawbacks of kindergarten.

“And what did you think of that answer?”

“Well, I’m kind of wondering about it now.”

“Maybe you weren’t doing the lesson she gave you.”

Chris jabbed the tomato again.

“Ah-hah.”

“It was folk dancing.”

“Not your favorite thing.”

“Not my anything!” His carrot broke, sending the tomato wedge across his plate. “She wants to see you.”

Gwyn stopped eating. “Did she say why?”

“Nope.” He stood up and dug around in his pockets, then handed Gwyn a crumpled envelope. She slipped a finger under the flap and tore. The paper had been folded neatly to begin with, but Chris’s pocket had added lots of wrinkles.

Dear Mrs. Sinclair,

Do you have time for a quick chat tomorrow? Before school, during recess in the morning or afternoon, at lunch hour or after school all work for me. Please call.

Five options. The only way Ms. Gibson could have made a parent-teacher meeting sound more urgent would have been to show up on the doorstep. Gwyn was off work the next day, so any of the times would suit her. She could walk to school with Chris and meet with the teacher before afternoon classes.

“Does she say why in there?” Chris asked.

“Not even a hint.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong. Least I don’t think so. Other than not dancing. Elliott danced but he kept kicking Drew on purpose. That’s worse, isn’t it?”

“Maybe she wants to tell me about something you did right.”

Chris looked surprised at the possibility. “I don’t think I did anything right, either.”

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